


But He Can Never Know That He Is Dead

by zarabithia



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Pre-New 52
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-15
Updated: 2007-08-15
Packaged: 2019-05-20 21:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14902007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: The Final Crisis came and "fixed" everyone. There is no more Nightwing or Red Arrow or Lian Harper, and there certainly isn't a Nightwing/Red Arrow. But thereisa Robin, and sometimes, he dreams.





	But He Can Never Know That He Is Dead

__In the end, Roy is clutching Lian's picture in one hand and holding on to Dick with the other.

Dick never thought it would end quite like this. He expected to go down fighting - with Roy at his side - but he'd always hoped it would be in a battle that would count - a battle in a _winnable_ war. That thought is what's kept him going all these years, the idea that he could make a difference, make a dent in the ongoing fight against crime.

He'd always believed it wasn't hopeless - otherwise what was the point in any of them continuing to fight the good fight?

But here and now, at the final battle, Dick sees that he was wrong. None of it matters. Nothing he ever fought for, no matter how great the cause, will be remembered or make a difference after today. Not after he draws his last breath...it will be forgotten.

Everything he and Roy fought for _together_ will be forgotten. All the times their team _worked_ \- all those times that made up for the stupidity and the fights and the mistakes they'd made - those _good_ times when they lived up to the shadows of the mentors and were the heroes they'd both tried so hard to be... all _those_ will be forgotten, after they lose this last battle in an unwinnable war.

He squeezes the hand holding onto him and tries not to dwell on all the mistakes made or time wasted.

Roy, as always, knows what he's thinking and stops him with a kiss that is as firm as Roy's hand on his wrists. The kiss is designed to keep him from talking, and it appropriately tastes of the soot that decorates their costumes and streaks their hair. "Don't, Short Pants. I don't want your last words to be an apology."

Dick won't let their last words be an argument either.  "I love you."  They express his regrets, without stating them.

Roy gives him a wry smile, knowing exactly the meaning behind those three little words. "I know. I always knew. And I love you too."

Dick can see the sun peeking up over the clouds. Day break - what had once been Dick's favorite part of the day, the time he reveled in watching from the rooftops in Gotham, New York, Bludhaven...

It now signals the end of the battle.

The loss of a war.

Whatever comfort Dick derives from knowing that they are facing the loss together is shadowed in the knowledge that come sunrise, that comfort will no longer be there.  
  
Come sunrise, their partnership will be forgotten.

****

The dreams started about a month ago. Dick isn’t sure exactly what they mean, but he has no intention of going to the World’s Greatest Detective to puzzle them out. Mostly because Dick isn’t sure that his father figure – and yeah, it’s taken him a couple of years, but Dick _finally_ feels comfortable thinking of Bruce that way – won’t have him undergo a thorough examination by Doc Leslie.

Dick’s not sure he doesn’t need one. For that matter, Dick’s not sure he doesn’t need locked up in _Arkham_. What kind of person has dreams like he’s been having about people he’s never met? But he has no desire to share that with Bruce. They’re partners, and Dick wants Bruce to keep thinking of Dick as a worthy partner, not some silly, crazy kid who can’t deal with a few bad dreams without crying to dad about it.

He does manage, however, to tell Bruce that he’s been having trouble sleeping…and that is one way of putting it, Dick supposes. Bruce offers relaxation techniques without further question, believing that Dick's "bad dreams" refer to dreams about his parents, which would be a reasonable assumption since the dreams about his parents falling used to be what bothered him the most.

Dick remembers that.

Although Dick feels guilty about not correcting Bruce’s assumption, he does incorporate the relaxation techniques into his morning rituals, no matter how dog-tired he is, and no matter how bleary-eyed patrol has left him.

They don't help. The strangers still haunt his dreams, and while the actions are various degrees of vague, their mere presence is enough to fill him with a sense of dread that usually only comes in battle in the seconds between seeing a punch coming without having time to duck accordingly and the time the fist actually makes contact with his face.

One of the more frequent nighttime visitors is a beautiful woman, with skin the color of the top of Dick's favorite tent at Haly's Circus and hair that matches the red in his Robin costume. Most of the time, she is wearing a purple costume, covering little more than a bathing suit would. Other times, she is dressed in slacks and a tightly tied shirt, kneeling in a garden and surrounded by flowers and a green dog. Still other times she is wearing a wedding gown and her pupil-less green eyes are filled with warmth as she looks directly at a man in some type of Vegas outfit.

Sometimes the woman with orange skin isn’t alone. Along with the little green dog, she sometimes swims alongside a dolphin, flies next to a girl in a red jumpsuit, fights a man with white hair, and caresses a boy wearing a not-quite right version of his Robin suit.

His suit's never had pants.

He prefers the boy - well, older than him, so Dick guesses he’s not really a boy – in the pants to the boy, still older than him, and still not really a boy, that wears a costume identical to his and gets beaten severely by a man Dick stops from hurting people _nightly._

That dream… it’s worse than almost any of the others.

But, even though those dreams cause Dick to wake up in a cold sweat, gripped in the type of panic that says he should know what’s going on, that he should be able to recognize all those he can’t speak to in his dreams… none of _those_ are the ones that fill him with the _worst_ kind of terror. None of them can compare to the dreams that force him awake at four a.m. struggling to breathe and not break down and cry at the sheer amount of loss he feels that makes Dick wonder if Scarecrow has found a way to douse him that only affects him when he lays down to sleep.

And none of those dreams terrify him too much to bring that suggestion up to Bruce.

No, that honor goes to the dreams with the red-haired man holding a bow in one hand and a black-haired little girl in the other.

The red-head’s costume looks suspiciously like Green Arrow's, but that _can’t_ be right. Green Arrow’s _never_ had a side-kick, red-head or otherwise, in the four years that Dick's been Robin. And he’s certainly never had any black-haired little girls hanging around him.

So Dick has no idea who the man pushing the little girl on the tire swing is, why her father is always so quick to greet the man in the black and blue costume, or why neither of them see that the little girl is awfully close to falling each and every time she reaches out with the hand that isn’t holding onto the teddy bear for dear life.

But the two men in Dick’s dream and the little girl don’t seem to be worried about falling. They don’t seem to have any idea how bad falling can be.

 _Those_ are the dreams that terrify him to much to tell anyone.

The only thing that terrifies him more than the dreams themselves is the idea that they might suddenly stop. They’re far too important to lose…Dick knows that much, even if he doesn’t quite know why.

It’s _all_ he knows about the dreams, and for that reason, he clings to them, no matter how terrifying they may be.

And he doesn't tell a soul.  
  
Not even his partner.  



End file.
